Looking at: ARMA 3

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This is War

ARMA contains volumetric fog, dynamic weather, and some gorgeous vistas. 

First Person shooters are, without a doubt, one of the most genres of games available. Regardless of the platform, regardless of the subject matter, FPS games are guaranteed to sell. Series like COD, Battlefield, and Halo regularly dominate the multiplayer scene with their fast paced gameplay and tight action. So is there room for an anti-FPS? A game the eschews all the genre norms and goes in the opposite direction? There seems to be, and ARMA 3 is living proof.

ARMA 3 isn't a good shooter, nor is it a functional RPG, racing sim, open-world adventure or "hiking sim". It's a combination of all of these and more into one functional, realistic, and occasionally hilarious package. It's the cure for the common COD, and the game Battlefield wishes it could be.

Long ARMA of the M72 LAW

The battlefield is often best observed from several kilometers away.

At it's core, ARMA is nothing more then a toybox of very advanced, very lethal toys. ARMA is the grown-up version of playing army men in the school-yard during recess. It's a completely open, largely unscripted experience that just lets you do whatever you want with the tools provided. Sure, there is a straight-faced military sim here, one that demands adherence to realism, but all that sort of flied out the window when you deal with a sniper by blowing his entire building sky high, or create a giant heart out of flaming car and tank wrecks.

The base of ARMA is, like I said, a military sim, and mechanically it sticks to that with a death grip. This is a military simulation, not a FPS game. Hell, even calling ARMA a "game" seems like it undersells the serious nature of it. The realism in ARMA is absolutely staggering, with things like realistic ballistics, fifteen different movement stances, or it's intricately detailed map of the Greek islands of Altis (Lemnos) and Stratis. It goes deeper then that, down to the actual basics of gameplay, with things like item weight affecting your movement speed, which also makes you tired, which makes aiming harder. If it seems like it would factor into real life, then ARMA 3 probably has it somehow.

It does still play like a shooter, at least that's the closest approximation of what ARMA feels like. You'll still move around, aim your weapon, and pull the trigger. That's the familiar, sure. Where it starts to feel different is how you move around, how you aim your weapon, and how you pull the trigger. Everything is realistic to a fault, and it's easy to get frustrated as the game tries to adjust to being a game and being a simulation at the same time. It's hard to explain in words, but play ARMA 3, then play any other shooter and you'll understand immediately. This is not a game for shooter fans, and liking ARMA means dealing with it's many flaws.

Danger Close

ARMA 3 isn't free of some...weirdness.

Chief among these flaws, at least for me, has always been how ARMA 3 handles. The controls aren't bad, as much as they're convoluted. But everything just feels...sluggish. A lot of that has to do with two things happening at the same time:
1) The adherence to realism, meaning that walking around with 75kg of equipment will make you move slow; and
2) The game rendering your character in 3rd person, even in 1st person.
You're not just a floating head with a gun in ARMA, you're an actual character, digital flesh and all. That means you can, and likely will, trip over yourself. The simple act of moving through a door can sometimes prove challenging, and the lack of a jump command can mean that sometimes you'll get stuck in the scenery with no way out. In fact, it's really easy to absolutely brake ARMA, simply by moving around the terrain. It doesn't really know how to handle vertical movement, so the smallest drop can result in a broken leg, and falling off a building can cause you to bounce off the ground like nothing happened.

Weirdness indeed...

Like so many other simulations, ARMA 3 also tends to forgo common "fun" elements for realism sake. Death comes swiftly in ARMA, and you'll rarely know from where or why. Being a realistic game, your character can only take, at most, a couple of shots before going down, and the densely packed terrain means you'll have issues seeing your target. There's a learning curve in ARMA steeper then most other games, and it's easy to get frustrated with it after the twentieth time dying from some unknown cause.

ARMA isn't a forgiving game on your computer either. This game is a beast to run, and if you want to keep up you'll probably have to pony up for a half decent rig. My machine is no slouch, especially after my recent purchase of a high end graphics card, and I still have problems running it occasionally. ARMA is a game you can benchmark with, and it'll make your system sweat.

"Think you can hit that?" "Let's find out" BOOM

ARMA 3 has so many different ways to position your character you're head will spin.

Contrary to everything though, ARMA is still a game that you can have fun with. There's a singleplayer campaign that'll teach you the basics, and it offers enough enjoyable moments to stay fun throughout. But the real meat of ARMA is in it's modding and multiplayer suites. This is where ARMA really shines and where you'll likely find the most enjoyment.

Let's start with the modding scene. Where other games seem to be moving away from modding, or actively discouraging it, ARMA was built to be modified. It comes loaded with an editor that's both incredibly complicated and yet simple to use. With no training at all any player can easily construct simple firefights and rudimentary missions. Spend some time with it and you can build entire campaigns, or new multiplayer modes. Best of all these can be shared on Steam workshop for others. The main campaign may only last a few hours, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of downloadable missions available through the Workshop, ranging from co-op missions, a randomized campaign for constant replayability, and so many more there simply isn't time.

Multiplayer though, that's ARMA's true strength. ARMA's multiplayer offers so many different ways to play that there's bound to be something you'll like. Enjoy classic deathmatches or point-capture missions? That's here. What emergent gameplay with dynamic events? Oh yeah. Want Player-VS-AI action? yup. There's even a mode called Zeus, where one player becomes a god and can affect the game, during gameplay allowing for truly bizarre moments of unscripted madness.

The world is huge, and filled with places to visit...

That's just what's built into the game. Like it's predecessors, some of ARMA's most popular game modes are ones created by it's community. A particular favorite of mine is the Wasteland mod, splitting players into three warring factions that kill each other while scavenging for survival. This brings me to one of my favorite stories from ARMA. Me and my friend were driving around, minding our own business when we were accosted by a helicopter gunship. We managed to evade the gunship and, in a stroke of luck, we found a ground-to-air rocket launcher. We tracked the helicopter until we were in range, locked on, and took the shot. The gunship went down like stone as we laughed our asses off at our accomplishment. These types of unscripted dynamic events are what ARMA was made for.

The most fun you'll ever have with an M16

To bad it's ultimately empty.

ARMA 3 is still a hard game to actually recommend to people. On the one hand it's an incredibly fun experience, especially online with other people. On the other hand, it's a difficult to use and psychotically unfriendly game to actually play. It's better then it's predecessor for sure, and it's much more stable to boot. Bohemia are also very involved, and their roadmap for ARMA's development in the next year or so is exciting to say the least.

ARMA 3 is a game worth trying if you're tired of common shooters. It's a game worth trying if you're looking for something the feels familiar, but offers so much more. It's a game worth trying if you want to see just what that fancy new graphics card can do. Lastly, it's a game worth trying if you've ever wanted to blow up a helicopter but can't afford the rocket laucher/helicopter/ federal prison sentence. ARMA 3 is a giant toybox, filled with fun, but it's covered in jagged edges and demands you earn your fun.